


Downward Spiral

by Buggy



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:18:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buggy/pseuds/Buggy
Summary: Recollections of Michael as he stalks the Archivist over the course of several key events.





	Downward Spiral

Michael only questioned the impulse a little bit when he decided to intervene.

Jane Prentiss might have succeeded in destroying the Archives, and that might not have been terrible. Who was to say? The Eye revealed just as he obfuscated. It penetrated veils of secrecy, discovered and savored and watched because that of course was its nature. One might say they opposed each other, for indeed there seemed little place for a lying throat in a world finally conquered through the Rite of the Watcher's Crown, where all manner of truths would be laid bare continuously.

And yet he stood by what he would say to the Archivist later, that the struggle required balance to progress properly. For all that they seemed to overlap he didn't want the Stranger inheriting mankind, and if the Eye was weakened then the Unknowing would have less obstacles in its path. The Stranger… anyone with a sense of nuance could see what set him apart from mannequins and clowns and skin filled with sawdust, those un-subtle menaces that obviously were even if they could not be instantly detected or understood in the regular sense. The Spiral was different. It was, but wasn't. He was, and wasn't. There was no concealment, just nothing and the something the nothing circled around in skewed loops, approaching but never arriving at a truth that might not even exist. Constant misdirection.

Corruption was no good either. All those wriggling parasites burrowing into flesh, and yet it had nothing that could touch the mind in a way that mattered. Filth that filled the senses, leaving no room for confusion as to what had claimed them? No thank you.

And so, when Michael met Sasha James in a coffee shop near Victoria Station, he rationalized the lingering interest he had in the Magnus Institute as pragmatism. Not that it mattered. He didn't always need a clear understandable reason for what he did, as it rather undercut the spirit of things. The Distortion could simply do things because it wanted to now that it served no purpose- so long as it didn't contradict its nature.

She heeded his advice. The carbon dioxide extinguishers worked against the worms, as he knew they would, and almost no one even died. Almost.

He first noticed when he followed Helen Richardson to their halls once again. Helen had been safely tucked away back into the corridors, and he was only just deciding that maybe he would leave without mentioning his presence to anyone when a stranger everyone supposed was Sasha James entered the Archivist's office.

And it bothered him.

It was perfectly normal for everyone to forget Sasha, perhaps. That was just how that particular aspect of the Stranger worked. And yet… and yet it dug into his mind like a burr digging into soft flesh. It reminded him of something better left forgotten, because of course he was not Michael even if he was Michael. Not in the same way that this Sasha was not Sasha, naturally, because they hid in Sasha's name and memories like a crocodile in murky waters. They were not part of the water. They never had been water.

He stayed to mention this deception to the current Archivist, and Michael found him to be more than anything else very Not Gertrude. Clumsy, abrasive, ignorant. It was adorable really. And the concern he had for poor Helen Richardson! How had he lasted even this long in his position, if he challenged things that had developed and existed for far longer than he could conceptualize, all for the sake of someone he'd only just met? So very unlike an Archivist. So unlike Gertrude.

His twisting insides turned to cold lead at this thought. Gertrude hadn't wasted concern on anyone.

Michael left the Archivist with hopefully more questions than answers and a few tantalizing hints as to what he faced. Perhaps he should have spoiled the ending just to antagonize Elias, but revelation wasn't in its nature. And besides, he wanted to see how long this backward man with all the cunning of a lame duck would last in trying to stop the Unknowing before something horrible happened. So he would wait, and watch, and if he happened to see the moment the Archivist realized Sasha was Not Sasha, well that might be interesting for personal reasons. Even if he wasn't a person.

Michael wasn't there when Melanie King did not think Not Sasha was Sasha, but he did hear the Archivist pore over the statements Gertrude Robinson had left him. It wasn't as satisfying as he'd hoped because when the second file was read aloud, the one from the folder in which Adelard Dekker's statement should have been…

“...they’re talking to someone else, someone you used to be. The person they think they’re seeing has been dead for years, but they didn’t see the change. They’re looking at a complete stranger, and they have no idea.”

Hmm. No, that was too close to a truth. He didn't like that, even if the statement-giver had really meant it as a parallel to Not His Cousin. Even if Lawrence Moore did not know his existence, and the Archivist did not know he was eavesdropping.

But it was alright. The statement didn't linger, and soon enough he could hear the distress in the Archivist's voice. The… concern. A laugh that no one but Michael heard bubbled up in Michael's throat. Why did this stupid man think he could spend time and energy worrying over the fate of someone he could not even remember properly? He was the Archivist, and sacrifice was what his assistants were for. He could replace Sasha even if Gertrude had never replaced the Michael he wasn't. It was entertaining, naturally, because Michael could not feel bitter about something that had never happened to what he now was. What it had always been.

The situation took a turn towards the delightful as the Archivist jammed all the puzzle pieces he had together into entirely the wrong picture. The patterned table that had been holding Not Sasha back from destroying the little bustling people in the Institute lay chopped to pieces by the Archivist's own hand. But Michael did want the fun to last, so he redirected the game down into the tunnels where it could be a proper chase instead of a one-person massacre, once the Archivist realized what he had done of course. Once… once Michael told the Archivist what he had done.

But he was the Distortion. He could do what he liked if it didn't contradict his nature, and the Archivist had already made his flagrant mistake. Revealing or allowing revealing could happen after the fact if it allowed for a properly horrified response; he'd done it before. And the Archivist did seem properly horrified.

So he did not question it as he watched the thing that had never been Sasha stalking the rough-hewn halls of stone beneath the institute. As he himself terrified the assistants back into his dizzying corridors (a nice bonus). As the Archivist found safety and more answers than he had ever asked for in the person who had hidden down there for so long. That was all right, for even with the answers he was still ignorant enough about so much else, especially when the librarian met his violent end at the hands of the Institute’s heart. No more answers for Jonathan Simms unless he searched them out himself.

When the assistants managed to stumble their way out of his maze… well they'd escaped into the Institute's protection, so that was fair. Their disposal was the Archivist's job anyways, and he didn't want to step on any toes.

Michael continued to watch, and listen, more closely than he could really justify. The Magnus Institute wasn't anything to do with him now. Even if he was pointless and had to find ways to entertain himself, this single-minded surveillance didn't become him, or at least shouldn't have. He countered to himself that it was natural to want some measure of recompense for what Gertrude had done to it, destroying its chance at ascendance. And as she was long dead, well, it was only natural to turn his sights on her replacement, and the organization she worked for.

He didn't act against the Archivist though. Something in his mind thought that was wrong somehow. After everything it still wasn't invested enough in these pitiful Watchers to do anything drastic, not when such actions would not give any immediate benefits to itself. He knew he wasn't focused, and he OUGHT to be focused on what rudimentary principles remained of its purpose- not to mention that the Archivist might still surprise everyone by somehow stopping the Unknowing. Ignoring these points was to tread through dangerous waters. 

This line of reasoning held out right up until he heard Michael Shelley's voice at the end of one of the statement tapes. The voice that would become his own.

He probably didn't need to breathe anymore, twisted and flexible as he was, but the breath caught in his throat anyways as he heard himself- no NOT himself, the other Michael asking Gertrude Robinson so earnestly if there was more he could do for her. Waiting on the Archivist like a dog pining for its master. The trembling recognition in the current Archivist's voice as the recording ended. And those stubborn truths he would happily have forgotten a thousand times over began to eat at his resolve like acid.

Lawrence Moore had been more correct than his figurative language could have predicted. No one was the same person for long. The Archivist was no longer the child who had seen his bully taken by the Web all those years ago, the Elias Bouchard who had smoked marijuana before his rise to power was nothing more than a memory, and he… he was no longer Michael Shelley. It wasn't the SAME, to have yourself ripped apart and stitched back together different in an instant, it wasn't the torturously slow grinding of time's millstone across one’s person, and yet. And yet it was… comparable. He was a new creation; the old had passed away and the new had come, and it had come like an earthquake to shake the very foundations of What he was, losing the Who to the twisted winding chasm that had opened up under his feet. It had happened wrong, it had happened to the wrong person, leaving it useless and perhaps forever divorced from its true, glorious purpose, but it had still happened.

The Archivist had led him into this pointless being.

The Archivist.

He was no longer Michael Shelley, and Gertrude Robinson was no longer the current, living Archivist of the Magnus Institute. But that might not have destroyed his hopes for vengeance after all.


End file.
